Saturday 26 September 2015

What Causes Poor Church Financing?

By Della Monroe


The church has always been known as place of worship; however, this place of worship does not run on its own but rather requires money to keep it going. Due to poor management, there have been various incidences where churches finances have been mismanaged which consequently raise doubts on the reliability of these institutions. In order to avoid such mistakes in church financing, there are some things one ought to keep in mind for a smooth running of this institution.

To begin with, most of them have no vision when it comes to the management of the church which is a mistake that cripples everything. There ought to be a vision in order to have a mission and therefore these institutions ought to be run like a business at least in the financial aspect. This means there should be a financial plan entailing expenditures and ways of generating income.

Also in this regard, a financial plan should go into specific details on the expenses to be incurred on the running projects and the source of revenue. Given the projects that most churches tend to take up, depending solely on offerings is unrealistic and therefore other sources of their revenue should be created for the success of these projects.

There are churches that fear asking money from their congregation due to the various speculations that have been running around of churches that are only running for financial benefits. As much as this might be true, this should not deter one from requesting the congregation to contribute in realizing the vision of these institutions as it is for their own good and benefit.

Churches fail to show their congregation the benefits they are getting from their contributions. In most churches, people only give money but they do not get to benefit so with time they lose the morale to contribute. The leaders are therefore asked to come up with ways in which they can show the main financial contributors that their efforts are not in vain.

In addition to this, asking too much can be nagging and should be avoided as running all these project might lead to breaching of trust. As imperative as these developments may be, this should first be a place of worship and the rest should follow otherwise this may be perceived as a business which is an image that churches should not portray.

Just like in running other businesses, churches tend to also make the mistake of getting themselves deep in debt in the name of wanting to make development in order to keep up with the ever advancing world especially technology-wise. With this, all contributions made only end up in settling these debts which stagnants developments.

The purpose of the board of management is to ensure that these finances are handled much financial intellect and therefore member of this board ought to be qualified in this field in order to keep track of expenditure and the flow of these finances in order to avoid mismanagement.




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